


We Burn Daylight

by formergirlwonder (orphan_account)



Series: Blue + Gold = Green [5]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation AU, Seriously what have I just written?, and others - Freeform, how did this happen?, romeo and juliet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 16:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10312508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/formergirlwonder
Summary: The Bughead reincarnation AU where they're reincarnations of other literary characters throughout history.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone!
> 
> Basically, I had the idea, "Oh, what if Betty and Jughead were a reincarnation of Romeo and Juliet, and he figured it out right before he climbed into her window?"
> 
> And then I went back and read a bit of R&J and realized that neither Betty nor Jughead could ever be capable of being that dumb. Literally. There is some amazing stupidity on display in that play (as well as gorgeous romance, of course, but that makes me sad, so let's stick to stupidity).
> 
> Somehow, that led to this? I have no clue what people will think of this, but hey, I guess we'll find out! (shrugs)
> 
> (I tried writing Elizabethan grammar in the dialogue, but it didn't come out sounding like Betty and Jughead, so I kept some of the sentence structure, but didn't swap pronouns.)

The first time, it turns out that it takes more to heal a feud than a couple of fancy golden statues in a graveyard with a trite inscription below. So when he strides into the Capulet ballroom for the first time since _that night_ , and the first thing he sees is _her_ , he can’t help the grief and the rage, because she’s the one who caused this whole mess, none of this would have happened if she didn’t think she was too God-damned good for Romeo Montague.

So he strides over to the chairs where she’s sitting and bows in front of her. “Milady Rosaline.”

He’s vindictively pleased when she quails slightly. “Milord.”

He asks her to dance, of course, because he’s a gentleman, and as they whirl around the polished marble, he tries and fails not to think about blushing pilgrims. “Pleased with your handiwork?” he hisses softly after they’ve been going for a while, and nobody takes it much askance, because this is the first ball since Juliet’s ill-fated wedding day, of course there’s going to be tension.

“I know not of what you speak,” she tries, and he tightens his grip on her arm ever so slightly.

“Romeo,” he whispers like a prayer, like saying it the right way might bring his best friend back. “If you had accepted his suit, laying aside your vow of chastity, he would have never wooed Lady Juliet. Upon your shoulders rests the destruction of both our houses.” It feels good to say that, to watch the hurt and anger flare up in her cheeks.

But there are more bars in the dance than he remembered, and so he cannot walk away just yet. When he looks up from a difficult step, there is a defensive fire in her eyes. But she, unlike him, speaks sweetly. “Milord Benvolio, you speak in error. Am I myself not a Capulet? If I were in the place of Juliet, how might Romeo have been saved, what _benefit_ could your house have reaped?” 

He hasn’t considered that angle of things, because the words bandied about town these days have been “Romeo and Juliet” more than “Montague and Capulet,” and Rosaline is more of a distant cousin than a full-born Capulet as Juliet had been.

She’s not finished. “In fact, my lord, what courage brings you to accuse me thus? My sister’s condition is ample proof of my family’s ruin. I owed it to my lord father to refuse Romeo’s suit, just as I owed it to Lord Capulet to turn away the child of his enemy.”

He knows, instinctively, that he has wronged her in this, (just as he knew that they should have gone inside the day of the fight,) and what does it forebode for their families’ futures if he, the peacekeeper, can behave like a second Mercutio?

He’s tempted to ask what her sister’s condition is, since he can’t remember, but she spat the word “condition” with a restrained fury that he fears to cross. His subconscious mind fills in the blanks a moment later: _unwed and with child, sent to a convent_. Many things about the lady Rosaline are beginning to make sense.

The sweetness is gone from her now, and he has not yet said another word. “She was my cousin!” Rosaline continues, her voice brimming over with as-yet-unshed tears. “And you Montague boors imagine you can wipe the stain from your name by slandering mine.”

“I am sorry,” he says softly, and means it.

They finish the dance and go back down to sit. “And as for yourself? Are you well?” he asks, hoping to mend the feud between them.

“No,” she answers curtly.

“Would you were,” he says sincerely. 

"I am sorry--" she begins, but someone else asks her to dance, and she is gone.

He sees much of her in the coming weeks, as the two families compete to prove their devotion to one another with balls, parties, and elaborate presents. As the last living Capulet of her generation, Rosaline becomes the Capulet heir, and can no longer keep her vow, and so all of Juliet’s surviving suitors transfer their affections to her. He pities her, from afar, watching her as she comes ever closer to buckling under the pressure. Rosaline is level-headed in a way Juliet never could have been, but her eyes are beginning to betray frustration with her relations’ foibles. He remembers the feeling well from hours spent editing Romeo’s poetry. She saves a dance for him whenever she can, and he saves all his best smiles for her. After all, she needs them more than he does.

He imagines his sister in Rosaline's position, imagines what her life would be if his mother hadn't sent her away when the feuding started. He imagines the uncertainty and terror graven across Rosaline's face (and his own) to be stamped on the faces of all those he holds dear, and the image haunts his dreams. 

He longs for security in a fragile, fragmented world.

Many months later, he adds his suit to the lot. Her face is blanched by terror, and when he draws her out to dance, she makes no secret of her thoughts. “My lord, why did you take this step? This peace between our families can not last forever, and when it crumbles--”

“We are not our families,” he insists, bending over to kiss her hand.

“But Benvolio--”

“The Prince will not refuse the chance to further unite our houses. Milady--do you love me?” He only asks because he thinks he knows the answer.

She draws back for a moment, staring at him fiercely. “As much as I can allow myself,” she half-admits, and he _understands_ , understands that she can’t repeat Juliet’s mistakes, understands that she can’t become her sister, understands the pressure Lady Capulet places on her to accept a favorable suit. She can’t allow herself anything, not yet. She does everything for the happiness of others, but she deserves this single choice for herself.

“And I love you more than I should allow myself. We are not our parents, Rosaline. Cannot we seek happiness?”

Rosaline takes a long moment and gazes at him. “I cannot promise that this will end favorably.”

Of course she can’t, she’s practical. He’s always been a secret romantic--look at his naive call for peace, for an end to violence. Rosaline is fully aware that the world will never be with her. Sometimes, that frightens her, as she confided in him once over a letter from her sister’s convent. More often, though, she takes the opposition in stride and fights for what she knows she can attain.

“But I can swear to give you as much of my heart as is mine to give, and to strive to liberate the remainder.”

He feels his face burst into a smile. “Also--” she begins, and stops, as if transfixed, staring down at his lips.

Romeo and Juliet died with a kiss; Benvolio and Rosaline are reborn with one.  
\-----  
That’s the first time that he remembers. There are other lives, farther back, he knows, and once in a tent on the eve of war, he tried to revisit those days. (All he got was a headache.) She has been there in almost every life, along with a few others, like a good-hearted, easily-carried-away boy and a spunky, vivacious girl. And ever since Benvolio and Rosaline, he carries the memories with him.

He doesn’t think she, or anyone else, ever remembers. He asked her, once, but she merely looked at him with an expression that he knows from centuries of loving her, the what-do-you-mean-you-silly-boy expression (half-laugh in her mouth, wrinkle between her eyebrows).

Their love story is secondary. It takes place in the corners and shadows of the more interesting goings-on. It isn’t an epic romance--after all, they’re not Romeo and Juliet, and never will be. They’re the sort of people who are friends before anything else, who don’t do love at first sight, who have stable, normal lives. But in every life, trouble finds them, and they rise to meet it.

That’s the constant with them: when they find each other, they’re instantly a team. It doesn’t matter who they are, what their lives are like this time around: their camaraderie picks up right where it left off, no getting-to-know-you necessary.  
\----  
Sometimes, he doesn’t realize until after she’s gone. The Mississippi only flows one way, and he’s drifting past a lighted window many miles South when he remembers her. The pieces click together, but there’s nothing he can do to go back, so he goes on.

He holds the memory of the resourceful, gritty, compassionate, red-headed heiress close to his heart, though.

Many years later, when his detachment is marching through (he begged Tom for money to pay off the draft, but of course Tom Sawyer _would_ envision war as a glorious lark), he pauses at the tavern and asks after Mary Jane Wilks. She’s gone, though, of course. Nobody stays in backwater Alabama hellholes for long.

He hopes she’s happy, and that she still prays for him, every now and then, like she said she would.  
\----  
Next time, they’re more the same age: childhood friends and playmates (but never sweethearts--at least, not yet.) He’d drifted around for almost forty years between, in a rather aimless life where he never quite caught up to her.

They meet after the War in a Tube station, of all places, and within an hour, they’re placing an ad for work as “Young Adventurers.” By the next day, she’s managed to rope him into becoming a blackmailer (with the purest intentions, of course.)

She’s more uninhibited, in this life. Detecting suits her, apparently, and she wades into the business with gusto and zeal. Halfway through their first case, there’s a moment where he’s nearly sure that she’s dead, and it rips his heart apart. Then she turns up, on the trail of the next clue, looking supremely pleased with herself, tossing off a witty quip with a sparkle in her eye.

They set up an agency together, “no unreasonable offer refused,” and they get in ridiculous scrapes, and then they get out of those ridiculous scrapes even more ridiculously. She calls it flair, zest, and panache. (He never figures out how she convinced him to try being blind for a day; she swears it was his idea all along.)

Their romance isn’t the subplot to someone else’s story, this time: it’s the subplot to their own adventures. He proposes seconds after the conclusion of a case. She tells him that she’s pregnant in the middle of a casual conversation about maybe closing up the firm someday.

Three children later, she’s running off in the middle of the Second War to counterspy against two of the most dangerous enemy agents in England, because of _course_ she can’t stay out of the game. He loves her and fears for her all at once, but he never leaves her side.

It’s a miracle when she manages to die happily in bed, surrounded by loved ones. Right up until her dying breath, any betting man would have laid good money that Tuppence Beresford would come to a sticky end.   
\----  
Now they’re childhood friends again. He’s from the wrong side of the tracks, which is hardly new: classism replaced blood feuds centuries ago. She’s pining away for his best friend, who he will (eventually) remember from long hours spent editing his poetry and tolerating his wild flights of fancy in almost every life.

He waits, even though he doesn’t know why.

Everything clicks into place between rungs two and three of the ladder he climbs up to her window. He reels from the impact and nearly falls off with the weight of his previous experiences.

By rung six, he’s made a decision. No matter what comes between them in this life, he won’t let them be the subplot anymore. He’s devoted his other lives to other things, but he wants to give this one to her. This time, it’s their story.

“Hey there, Juliet,” he says as he helps her push the window up. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Books referenced: 
> 
> Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (Yes, I know there's a whole sea of YA novels that headcanon a Benvolio/Rosaline romance, but I didn't draw on them for this--it's more of the fact that Benvolio is one of the most reasonable people in the play, and Rosaline must be smart, seeing as she knew enough to stay out the way of Romeo "Walking Disaster Who Brings Destruction to Everyone He Meets" Montague.)
> 
> The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. First off, I skipped to this time period because I couldn't find much literature I liked in the interim. Secondly, I know Mary Jane is older than Huck in the novel, but I feel like Twain sends signals that Huck has a crush on her (even though it's a hopeless one).
> 
> The Tommy and Tuppence Beresford series, by Agatha Christie. Everyone who has not read this should go find it now. That's all I'm going to say about this one.
> 
> Basically, thanks for reading!!


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